Investigating process-structure relations of ZnO nanofiber via electrospinning method

1D ZnO nanofibers were fabricated in this study using the electrospinning method through sol-gel approach. The effects of fabrication processing parameters on the nanofibers size have been systematically investigated. The higher concentration of the polymer resulted in a broader distribution of the nanofibers diameter due to non-uniform ejection of the fluid jet. The results indicated that an increase in annealing temperature resulted in a lower diameter size and more uniformity of the nanofiber due to decomposition of PVA. The DSC result confirms that an annealing temperature higher than 480 °C is required to remove the PVA and fully decompose the zinc acetate to form crystalline ZnO nano structure. The presence of a crystal ZnO phase was further confirmed by TGA, XRD, FTIR and PL analysis.